1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bill counter having the function to determine whether bills are authentic or not.
Further, the present invention relates to a bill counter, more specifically relates mainly to a bill counter having plural kinds of authenticity/counterfeit determining means that enables to easily conduct authenticity/counterfeit determination, without need for an operator to set how to determine with which kind of authenticity/counterfeit means according to characteristics of objective bills.
2. Description of the Related Art
Bill counters having the function to determine whether bills are authentic or not can roughly be divided into two. The first type of bill counter specifies face value kinds of objective bills, and conducts authenticity/counterfeit determination according to the specified face value kinds. On the other hand, the second type of bill counter conducts authenticity/counterfeit determination, without specifying face value kinds, and configured to conduct authenticity/counterfeit determination according to characteristics not depending upon face value kinds.
Bill counters belonging to the above second type having plural different kinds of authenticity/counterfeit determining means (detectors) are already disclosed to those skilled in the art, and there are, for example, one bill counter disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,804 and another disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 53-44089 A by the same applicant.
These publications disclose means for detecting magnetic ink and means for detecting fluorescent reaction as authenticity/counterfeit determining means, and in the case wherein the magnetic ink is detected in a bill to be inspected and also fluorescent reaction is not detected, the bill inspected is determined as an authentic bill.
In the first place, the bill counters disclosed in these publications are supposed to be used to handle only U.S. bills, as described in their specifications, therefore, authenticity/counterfeit means are selected and combined according to the characteristics of the U.S. bills. Namely, they employ the determining method based on the characteristics that the US bills (authentic bills) use magnetic ink, and fluorescent reaction is not detected in them.
While, in the Euro bloc, there is a demand for a bill counter equipped with authenticity/counterfeit determining function to handle both Euro bills and U.S. dollar bills circulated all over the world. Further, in nations neighboring to the Euro bloc, there is a demand for a bill counter equipped with authenticity/counterfeit determining function to handle not only the Euro bills and the U.S. dollar bills but also bills of their own nations.
The counterfeit bill preventive countermeasures vary with respective nations, and various countermeasures, for instance, adoption of infrared ray absorbing ink, interweaving of threads and so forth, are taken, therefore, in order to handle these bills, it is naturally required to adopt an infrared ray absorbing ink detector and a thread detector. By loading plural authenticity/counterfeit determining functions corresponding to these various counterfeit bill preventive countermeasures, it is possible to make a general purpose bill counter that handles bills of many countries.
However, in order to make the most of the above general purpose bill counter, it is necessary for operators to be well informed of the contents of counterfeit preventive countermeasures concerning bills to be inspected, and set detectors according to the counterfeit preventive countermeasures, as a consequence, complicated settings has to be done and it can't easily be used, which has been a problem with the prior art.
While, there is a demand for a bill counter equipped with authenticity/counterfeit determining function to handle both Euro bills and US dollar bills circulated all over the world, in nations over the world, besides the above, various counterfeit preventive countermeasures, for instance, adoption of infrared ray absorbing ink, interweaving of threads and so forth, are taken in respective nations, therefore, in order to handle these bills under various counterfeit preventive countermeasures, only magnetic ink detection and fluorescent reaction detection mentioned above are not sufficient, but it is naturally required to adopt an infrared ray absorbing ink detector and a thread detector.
By loading authenticity/counterfeit determining functions corresponding to these various counterfeit bill preventive countermeasures, it is possible to make a general-purpose bill counter that handles bills of many nations. However, in order to make the most of the general purpose bill counter, it is necessary for operators to be well informed of the contents of counterfeit preventive countermeasures concerning bills to be inspected, and set detectors according to the counterfeit preventive countermeasures, as a consequence, complicated settings must be done and it is hard to use, which has been a problem with the prior art.